Department of Ed is about to get red-pilled: and everyone is losing their minds

No time for subtleties.  American teachers, administrators & bureaucrats but teachers more than anyone else… you suck. You have failed generations of students and this nation. There is no dancing around it any longer. Just accept the truth for what it is and maybe WE can fix your mess. I’ll get back to that.

Unless you live in some Unabomber utopia completely devoid of social media over the last week then you missed out on the high-tech lynching of one Betsy Devos. The school choice champion out of Michigan who was lambasted via her Senate confirmation hearing this week. There were some questions she either refused to answer or simply flat out did not know or even have an intelligent answer to. Under normal circumstances in this setting, it would be alarming and naturally, that’s all the red meat the liberals needed to declare DEFCON 5 across Twitter, Facebook and the like.

Suddenly your aunt, cousin or brother who happens to be one of 3.1 million full-time teachers across the country all of a sudden were instantly macro political scientists. People who normally don’t even know who makes up the three branches of government were “WOKE”. Pitchfork in one hand with the other shielding their sixteen students with the steadfast resolve of a mother grizzly bear protecting her cubbies.

Knowing full well, the overwhelming majority didn’t watch the hearing but instead picked up the cliff notes and immediately were enlightened. The irony of teachers taking the shortcut and coming up with subpar opinions/equivalencies is rich. Only in America can you spend a boatload on mediocrity and then have the perpetrators burn a strawman. And not get called on it. But those days are over. If we are to have this discussion let’s put all the cards on the table. If education is really the foundation for our Republic than its too important to mince words any longer.

First of all Devos, she’s a hatchet (wo)man. She was picked to grab the bull ( the education system) by the horns and push it to “school choice” as opposed to the traditional public education model. If and when she makes this a reality; mission accomplished. Devos has been a proponent of Common Core; a socialist/globalist wet dream where everyone at best achieves average. Just smart enough to run the machines but too dumb to think critically outside the box. Thus no threat to the power structure. Fittingly, that kind of sums up Devos here in both regards. Now that we got that out the way and are no longer mincing words…

Teachers? Yeah, back to them and I’m talking to all 3+ million of you. You suck. The results are in. The numbers don’t lie. We are floundering across the board compared to all other 1st world nations by just about every metric. No matter how much we shrink class sizes, no matter how much money we essentially set on fire IN THE NAME OF THE CHILDREN; nothing changes. And not only do you suck, you’re defiant and completely ignorant to your complicity in the rot that is at the core of the US Public education system.

We have seen a bureaucracy of a few powerful unions envelop the educational system like a Burmese python. This control and power so rigid and consolidated, it creates an environment where teachers performance and aptitude mean nothing and outside of giving a kid fellatio in his or her classroom with multiple witnesses… virtually impossible to fire them. Sure, there are some great teachers. Everyone can remember their favorite or most impactful teachers but we forget about the average or poor ones. Just how many poor teachers though are there?

There was an LA Weekly investigation done back in 2010 of the Los Angeles public school system that illustrates this. After a five-month investigation, LA Weekly determined that the Los Angeles Unified School District, with its 885 schools and 617,000 students who educate one in every 10 children in California spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district’s 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance. The average cost of those cases was $500,000.

Not sure about the averages here but 33k teachers and only 7 were deemed incompetent? Apply those odds anywhere else in the American workforce and get back to me. Think about your drive-thru experiences. Think about contractors. Think about police (whom half are racist anyway, right?). How about priests? Think about watching your favorite football team. Or an MMA bout. You see what I did there at the end?

There are substandard or incompetent professionals everywhere; in every profession. Teaching is no exception. Yet it’s never even in the debate while our educational gains have been marginal if at all – over the last 30 years. We seem to have been inflicted with: Teacher Worship Syndrome. We’ve seen the Department of Education’s solutions for our educational apathy. We’ve tried no Child Left Behind. Common Core. We’ve incentivized teachers and students alike. From limo rides to Visa gift cards for just showing up. That’s right, we’ve resorted to paying for a public (free) education and still… not enough.

It’s gotten so bad and because teachers are so untouchable that Slate ran a story a few years ago on how “bad teachers can be made into good teachers”. It’s just our kids and all of our futures at stake, just capitulate, throw some training at them and viola. Presto, we have better teachers. Except for that doesn’t work. The study the article was built around was a study done in a school district in Ohio in 2001, that centered on Teacher Evaluation System or TES. Despite its success or failure, it didn’t pick up steam as the article points out: “a 2009 survey by the New Teacher Project found that school districts rarely use evaluation for any purpose other than remediation and dismissal”.

So… no oversight. No accountability. Par for the course.

James Marshall Crotty, who wrote a flaming deposition for Forbes back in 2012, came across some facts that only further compound my case, consider:

• Despite high U.S. unemployment and far higher under-employment, major U.S. employers cannot find qualified American applicants to fill their job openings (skills gap). For instance, 63% of aerospace and life science firms report shortages of “qualified workers.”
• 75% of U.S. citizens ages 17-24 cannot pass military entrance exams because they are not physically fit, have criminal records, or because they lack critical skills needed in modern warfare, including how to locate on a map military theaters in which the U.S. is fulsomely engaged, such as Afghanistan
• According to a recent report by the not-for-profit testing organization, ACT, only 22 percent of U.S. high school students met “college ready” standards in all of their core subjects; these figures are even lower for Hispanic and African-American students. This means that, upon graduating high school, more than 50% of college-bound students need to take remedial classes in one or more subjects, though a far lower percentage actually do.
• In 2009 PISA, U.S. students ranked fourteenth in reading, twenty-fifth in math, and seventeenth in science compared to students in other developed countries.

How do we fix this mess? McKinsey & Company, an independent consulting firm outside of the education lynch-mob has made some rather compelling arguments on just how and why our teachers are to blame for our education ineptitude. From the Asian model, more specifically the Singapore model the proof is all in teacher selection and retention. How to select them and how to keep them is the largest indicator from boom or bust. Take Finland for example, the leading nation in education the world over:

• Students don’t start school until they are of age seven. In the first two years of school, they spend 4-5 hours per day in it. Yet at the age of 15, Finnish students are atop of the world’s testing at math, reading science and problem-solving.
• PAYS PRIMARY EDUCATORS MORE THAN SECONDARY EDUCATORS. Seems too logical. 
• They recruit from the top 10% of college graduates in education to become teachers.
• Finland has a two stage selection process just to get into university to train as teachers; here in the states all you need is a pencil and piece of paper and you can be a teacher.
• Finland frontloads salaries. By starting at a higher salary either money isn’t an issue anymore as the gap from a teacher with 1-year service to a teacher of 30 years service is at most 18%.
• Finland also requires all teachers to have a masters degree.     
• They also require teachers to assemble together in groups. Collaborating on lesson plans, reviewing each other’s lessons thus helping each other improve. They even off time off (one afternoon each week) to accommodate this to happen.
• Special Education is destigmatized. Finland has an average of 1 in 7 teachers are for special education as many as 30% of its students while need some assistance in a school year.

As I said, in the beginning, these are not the normal circumstances. Yes, the setting is the same with the hearings on Devos but this is a scene out of the Matrix. Where the bullets are in slow motion. Where you are fending off multiple enemies with martial arts while admiring the wall decor. Trump, is trolling anyone that got upset by this nomination or any of his other nominations for his cabinet. His selections for their respective posts are almost all adversaries of their cabinet position. Devos is no exception. She has been on record saying “government truly sucks” and called public education a “dead end” because, well because the results speak for themselves. Trump wants to burn a lot of these agencies to the ground and the Department of Education created only 37 years ago is at the top of his list. I mean how did we ever learn without it for 200+ years? But our cotton candy soft populous couldn’t handle that approach, there wouldn't be enough safe spaces and cuddling corners around academia for that fix. So the trojan horse method looks like the softest landing for what needs to be done.

Education here in the states via the federal communist monopoly is spinning its wheels, so why not try something completely different? Why not put it back into the hands of those very states where the advantage of a republic can take hold like its supposed to? Where a city or state can adopt a different pedagogy. Over time the cream rises to the top and all the states can learn from each other. Look at DC. The independent incubation process is what makes us the United States. Collaboration instead of capitulation. ProWestarian US culture over globalism. The individual over communism. School choice being an enemy to education is a farce. If public schools die as a result; so be it. Having fewer choices and competition is a close minded, scared and a fatally failed perspective. Not to mention completely un-American.  There is a lot of you teachers out there and of course, most of you don’t suck. However, if you want to keep ignoring the fact that those around you or even you, yourself, isnt the solution but are actually the problem; then keep blaming Trump and continue arm chairing senate committee hearings. Or in other words, shit in one hand and stuff your complaints inside the other. Do THAT math year after year and grade the results. 

Post Script:
Hero’s don’t get a summer vacation.   

The New(ish) economy: Dirty Jobs Trump the Ivory Tower

We are all witness in this new golden age of journalism and media, the likes we have never seen before. With a video camera and an internet connection, people are etching out their own place in the world to tell truths and raise suspicion in ways we haven't seen since the days of Thomas Paine.

As more media comes online, media that isn't solely driven by profit but instead driven by passion & truth it's competing on level playing field and in some cases replacing traditional media outlets. Where no longer your platform is your advantage. And it's not just newspapers in jeopardy anymore. All traditional and mainstream media quivers with the notion they're being tuned OUT, not IN. But to be a credible witness you must pass the jury of truth.

We are that jury of truth. Words, ironically enough do matter. Thank you, leftists! And if we sit back and take everyone at face value without preconceived notions of platform and statue whose words are true and whose are incoherent nonsense may surprise you.

Today I present to you, the jury of truth, three witnesses. And the case I present to you is Jobs and the skills gap. Skills "gap," you say? This happens to be a dirty little secret for anyone that works in construction or simply travels the country enough to see there are jobs to be had; we just don't have the quality of trained people to fill them. As a small business owner myself, for me this is the biggest struggle I have growing my business. Anecdotal of course but make no mistake, across the country the skills gap is very real.

Paul Krugman, a liberal economist doesn't believe there is a skills gap. He once opined that the skill gap was in fact “a prime example of a zombie idea — an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die”. Yes, the same Paul Krugman who blamed the weakest recovery in American history (apologist for Mr. Obama no doubt) because the government was forced to curb deficit spending. In Krugman's world, deficit spending = job creation. Without pointing out the obvious short-sidedness of this in any long term measurables, even at the zenith of optimism, in the short term… it’s a dead cat bounce at best.

“TO FIGHT THIS RECESSION THE FED NEEDS MORE THAN A SNAPBACK; IT NEEDS SOARING HOUSEHOLD SPENDING TO OFFSET MORIBUND BUSINESS INVESTMENT”

This is a man after all who believes and writes op-ed after op-ed on how the FED can cure all that ails the natural economic cycle. The FED. Not natural interest rates but the artificial rates orchestrated by the FED. Be that it may, a crooked petrol dollar fiat scheme until the bitter end, it's still of this world and a 100% human creation. Therefore you cannot escape its entropy. Inflation in this monetary system is like gravity in spacetime. You cannot travel faster than the speed of light to outrun gravity and you cannot escape the compound interest paradox regardless of how many Harvard degrees you accumulate on your wall. Paul Krugman is not a credible witness.

Donald Trump complains about jobs leaving overseas. SEIU, one of the largest unions still left and incidentally enough the largest government union in the nation announced last week it's cutting its budget by 30% because of.... President-elect Trump.

“BECAUSE THE FAR RIGHT WILL CONTROL ALL THREE BRANCHES OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, WE WILL FACE SERIOUS THREATS TO THE ABILITY OF WORKING PEOPLE TO JOIN TOGETHER IN UNIONS,” PRESIDENT MARY KAY HENRY WROTE IN AN INTERNAL MEMO OBTAINED BY BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK.

First of all, "far right"? Trump? Trump is hardly far right but I digress. That is actually a win for Trump. Nothing to add to that. But my eyes could simply skim over this quote from President Mary Kay Henry...

“FOCUS OUR RESOURCES AND ENERGY ON THE FIGHTS THAT POSITION US TO RETAKE POWER IN 2018, 2020 AND BEYOND.”

Organized labor fighting for power in elections. Where have we seen this movie before? Circa 1933?

To his credit, Trump was the only candidate to continuously rail against NAFTA and TPP. While it’s true, the middle class has been chipped away at over the last four decades with trade being a part of that decline; it’s not the biggest culprit. That decline was in effect long before the offshoring of jobs started taking a footing. The best way to sum up the decline of the middle class and the loss of jobs overseas is simply this: It's complicated. So much so that it’s layered with layers of many competing mitigating factors. To blame it on free trade above all else is irresponsible and just plain not true.

We have seen entire sectors hollowed out while others boom. Sure, many Americans do feel left out and left behind in Middle America. And that, probably above all is what made Mr. Trump the 45th president. But that doesn’t make those people or he correct if they’re thinking to end free trade or raising tariffs will simply be the magic wand to make America great again. It might bring back some jobs but it will destroy just as much or more of existing jobs with existing families relying on them. Surely, It will make goods and services costs rise and that is no recipe to grow an economy.

Recently, Deborah Lockridge wrote a piece on free trade and quoted FedEx Chairman and CEO Fred Smith. Smith speaking to the audience at the National Council on Competitiveness Forum in mid-December warned Trump by saying this:

“WE HAVE THE BEST EXAMPLE OF PROTECTIONISM FROM OUR OWN HISTORY. THE DEVASTATING SMOOT-HAWLEY ACT OF 1930 RAISED TARIFFS ON MORE THAN 20,000 ITEMS. THIS CONTRIBUTED TO A 66% DECLINE IN WORLD TRADE FROM 1929 TO 1934. THIS MISGUIDED ACT OF CONGRESS IGNITED THE GREAT DEPRESSION.”

Does this mean raising tariffs is a bad idea? Not necessarily but raising prices on goods and services will cancel its gains out by raising prices. Government wins, consumers lose.

Bringing back blue collar jobs (manufacturing) is a noble cause and one that should be positive but how that is accomplished will be messy. In a matter of a decade, we saw manufacturing slip from 20% of GDP to 5%. But how many jobs can be saved from automation? It's not like we are living a Jetsons lifestyle just yet but automation is at some point will be the next scapegoat for the declining middle class as its only a matter of time where technology is improved and even more jobs will die off. However, while bringing back jobs that were let go offshore won't save the middle class it certainly couldn't be any worse than the previous administration's stance on offshoring jobs...

"SERVICES LIKE ENGINEERING, RESEARCH, AND DEVELOPMENT, FINANCE AND SOFTWARE PRODUCTION– WHICH TYPICALLY PAY HIGH WAGES – CAN NOW BE MORE EASILY TRADED ACROSS COUNTRIES. AS A RESULT, THE UNITED STATES IS POISED TO EXPAND ITS TRADE SURPLUS IN SERVICES, WHICH HAS ALREADY GROWN SUBSTANTIALLY, NEARLY TRIPLING IN SIZE SINCE 2003, TO $146 BILLION IN 2010."

So if unpacking the jobs that left will be hard what about the jobs we have here now that are going unfilled? Contrary to popular belief and the stigma that goes along with it, a college degree isn't the only pathway to a respectable and sustainable living.

Take transportation for example. This is is one sector that has been a major winner with free trade. Trucking alone has had shortages of drivers for at least a decade.

Bill Graves, former president and chief executive of the American Trucking Associations wrote about this issue last summer.

"WHEN I FIRST CAME TO THE AMERICAN TRUCKING ASSOCIATIONS IN 2003, AMONG OUR INDUSTRY’S TOP CONCERNS WERE DIESEL COSTS, THE DRIVER SHORTAGE, INSURANCE COSTS AND SECURITY.

IN THE NEARLY 14 YEARS SINCE MANY THINGS HAVE CHANGED. I THINK IF YOU SPOKE TO TRUCKING INDUSTRY EXECUTIVES TODAY, THE COST OF FUEL AND INSURANCE OR HOW BEST TO SECURE THE SUPPLY CHAIN WOULDN’T BE AT THE TOP OF THEIR PRIORITY LIST, BUT THEY’D HAVE A LOT TO SAY ABOUT THE DRIVER SHORTAGE."

Driving a truck, that doesn't seem that prominent does it? But that's just it. That's the problem with perception and conditioning. We've been conditioned to scoff at these types of jobs while they go unfilled while another college graduate goes underemployed or simply unemployed.

2015 mean annual earnings of truck drivers: $43,410
2015 average earnings for college graduates is: $45,400
2015 those who’ve only completed high school: $25,900

We don't have a jobs problem here. We have a fortitude problem. So Trump, like many or most of his diatribes is tapping into a problem or sees the writing on the wall, except it's written in hieroglyphics and he only speaks in sign language. Thus, Trump isn't FIRED but he must do a better job of addressing the wage gap that already exists.

Now, may I please present to you juror #3. Mike Rowe. Yes, that Mike Rowe of the Dirty Jobs variety. He's doing his best to promote ending the skills gap with actually incentivising skilled work through his charity ProfoundlyDisconnected.

There is now a 5.6 million skills gap from everything to plumbers to masons to heavy equipment operators and everywhere else in between. This is not just some random number from Mike Rowe either. He is quoting the Department of Labor. And training for these new careers won't add to the 1 trillion (and growing) dollar boondoggle that is the student debt bubble that ominously awaits an eruption like a fiat Mt St Helens.

So yes we do have a problem with the hollowing of the middle class. People left behind from the factory that disappeared are a reality but the problem isn’t just going to be cured by a company reopening its doors via tariffs, repatriating or from idle threats. Does that mean trading jobs for tax breaks should not still be pursued? Of course not. The corporate tax rate stifles business especially small business but in the meantime, let's take the easiest route possible. It's just a matter of perception and priorities. Mike Rowe gets it. He's traveled the country and understands quite well the reality versus perception that has sacked this nation's "can do" spirit.

If we define success and working nirvana by a four-year degree with a mountain of debt attached to it (thank you subsidies) then that gap only widens. But if we reverse this pussification and get real about OUR economy we will achieve the closest we've been to full employment as we've ever been.